Melodrama in Merrist Wood – sinister goings-on at ‘the inn where nobody stops’.
OUR VERDICT
Guildburys Theatre Company offers an entertaining evening in the beautiful setting of Merrist Wood — a mixed bag of violent action, romantic melodrama and poetry, with a surprising twist at the end.
Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Jamaica Inn is a romantic melodrama with all the essential elements of the genre: a feisty young heroine beset by dangerous ruffians, a handsome young suitor offering her excitement but uncertainty, and terrible goings-on and betrayals in a wild landscape with weather to match. The action ranges from Bodmin Moor’s desolate misty hills and bogs to the rocky coastline of North Cornwall. The story has been adapted by movie-makers including Alfred Hitchcock who emphasised the horrors implicit in the practice of ‘wrecking’ by 18th century Cornish smugglers.
Lisa Evans’ adaptation for the stage includes some powerful descriptions and poetic language, though for me her use of a ‘Greek chorus’ of Cornish villagers (somewhat in the style of T S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral) jarred; I found the repetitions in the chorused interludes became tedious and the miming that accompanied the words unnecessary and distracting.
JOHN SHERRINGHAM
Mary Yellan (Rachel Mawditt) arrives to keep her Aunt Patience company in the doleful, sinister Jamaica Inn ‘where nobody stops’, run by her uncle Joss Merlyn (Tim Brown.) On-stage throughout the play is ‘Woman’, whom we quickly recognise as an invaluable narrative aid who voices Mary’s inner life: her doubts, dreams, fears and hopes. Caroline Whillans performs superlatively in this role, threading the action together continuously and actively in songs, asides, and dialogue with Mary.
Rachel Mawditt is excellent: feisty, charismatic and free-ranging in her responses to the plot. However melodramatic the situation, she plays it for real, and extracts sardonic humour at key moments. Clare Racklyeft as Aunt Patience is convincing as the victim of extreme domestic abuse whom Mary desperately tries to save despite her clear emotional enslavement to Joss Merlyn. Patience’s tears alternating with delusional chatter and craven fear evoke protectiveness but also impatience from the younger woman. Tim Brown also gives a strong interpretation of the volatile moods of the bingeing drunk. Neil James is a smooth-talking, up-country Francis Davey, vicar of Altarnun.
The climax of the play brought a gibbous moon out over the set at Merrist Wood, as the wreckers’ murderous work was envisioned and brought to life by powerful deliveries of speeches by Tim Brown and the cast of villainous patrons of Jamaica Inn and cowed villagers, now on the rocky cliffs of Cornwall. This is where Guildburys Theatre Company have once more succeeded in creating the suspension of disbelief for their audience that’s such an essential element of theatre.
